Author's NB: So yeah, I live in New Zealand, and if you guys pay any attention to the news you may have heard there was a little earthquake. Guess where I live?
Anyway, just as I was planning to get back into this story it happened and I've lost a lot of sleep over my un-quake-initiated neighbours who start screaming every time the aftershocks rattle.
I had actually written some chapters on paper, but my water bottle fell over and soaked them through so that's why I haven't updated in a long while – I lost about five chapters and I can only remember the gist of it.
Plus, it'll make a nice change to write this thing as opposed to putting up with friggin' morons who keep asking me the same crap about the stupid quake. Its stressin' me out, and I write good angst when I'm stressed.
Chapter Thirty Four
"Why are we stopping?"
"I was under the impression that humans require moments to initiate waste removal protocols".
"What?"
"He means he thinks you need to pee, as the human colloquialism goes".
The disembodied voice of Skids chortled over the speaker in Prowl's car.
"I figured that's what you meant, but is it safe, that's what I'm asking?"
"Yes, the radiation levels are as low as they're going to be, and as long as you do not ingest anything you find in this location and if you keep exposure to a minimum of five minutes, twenty three seconds of your time, you will be fine".
Wendy did need to go to the bathroom, and it was nice of them to stop for her to do so, and while part of her was unconvinced about the safety, she did have to acknowledge her need to void was a lot more irritating then stressing over the levels of radiation. Prowl opened the door for her and she climbed out, her heart skipped a beat when she entertained a moment of paranoia where they'd drive off and leave her.
"Watch your step".
Prowl stated.
Looking down she noted just how bad the environment around her had deteriorated. Perhaps this had once been a nice little park, or a rest stop of some description, hell, it could have even been someone's well loved back yard. The dirt was free of any grass, it having been burnt down to the soil, which was hardened and dry, any moisture that had lay on the surface had been boiled up so swiftly by the heat of the blast, not even steam had had time to exist. Large cracks had opened up and ran along for several hundred metres in a range of directions. A few dried and charred twigs poked up out of the dead earth in several places, obviously having once been a bush or shrub of some kind. Up ahead she could see a suspicious looking pile of rubble, a few bricks, blackened and dried to the point of cracking lay strewn about the centre of what it had once been. As it would provide the most privacy, she approached it.
Each foot step kicked up a small, yet no less irritating, cloud of dust and soot. She reached the pile and took a moment to contemplate on what it had once been, perhaps a garden shed? Or a pump house for a swimming pool – of course there were no signs of there having had been a pool. The young woman stepped over a small scattering of bricks and made her way to the other side of the mound to what would offer some smidgen of privacy.
"You have two minutes left, Wendy".
Prowl called from behind, as she finished her business. She sighed and sat back against a firmer looking section of the rubble. Up ahead she could make out several large trees, dead like everything else, of course. They looked like every other tree she'd come across, every other tree they had passed on their journey to wherever. There was a house a few metres from where she sat, or at least there had been, its heavy concrete foundations, charred and scratched all that remained. Perhaps the rubble she had just left her business behind had once been part of the house as opposed to its own individual structure. Standing she stretched out a niggling twang in her leg, she noted with a morbid restraint the blackened skeletal arm, hand missing, poking out from under the rubble. A twisted piece of something around its wrist – most probably the remains of a watch or bracelet; it looked rather masculine in its design, so perhaps the male owner? Deciding not to give him any more consideration; what was the point, she moved on.
"Were your waste mechanisms functioning at acceptable efficiency"?
"Yeah, Prowl, everything was working tip top".
She climbed into the Autobot and just as she was about to close the door she stood again.
"What is it?"
He asked her.
"I just saw someone, over there, I swear it".
"Are you sure?"
"As sure as I want to be".
"Get back in".
The strategist instructed.
"Skids, deactivate your lighting, lock your doors and remain still. Wendy duck down".
At least he could keep calm, she thought as she clambered down in an awkward backward angle to hide under the dash of the passenger's side, yet given his previous dismissal of moments where she had suggested they were being followed or that she had seen someone, she did realise there had to be something out there, moving, if he was responding like this.
A few moments of considering her own paranoid fantasies, and the ache in her lower back, she realised she had seen something.
The footsteps were slow, unsteady, and uneven, they were the sounds made by someone injured, someone hurt; human compassion inwardly urged her to offer assistance, but the Autobot had remained silent, not offering so much as a continuance to his order to remain still.
There sounded as if there were a second set of footsteps, perhaps a third, accompanying the first. A groan. The female had to quickly control herself as she felt a giggle struggle to escape as she considered how like a bad zombie movie it was.
"No… not here. You… wrong, you… para…noid".
A distinctly human, male, voice stated.
"Where these… vehicles… come from?"
"Used to be… a… trailer… park…."
Another male voice asked, and a female voice replied. So definitely three.
They had to be seriously injured to speak like that, she mused, becoming more and more grateful at just how lucky she was to survive any kind of physical distress, or was it "blessed"? The small convoy remained still, quiet, and simply waited for these three to find no interest in what the cars were doing there and to continue onwards. She did have to wonder what could spook the giant alien robots so much that they would demand silence when three small and injured humans were staggering by – unless there were more, unless these three were some kind of scouting party for something much worse. She had heard stories already, Prowl and Skids had refrained from giving her the most horrific of details, but the images she had seen since the blasts, and the stories from Steph and her irritable husband, from the others in that little camp, from the occasional passer bys. The human wasn't sure if she should be impressed or afraid that it didn't take long for survivors to organise themselves into groups with morally suspicious mission statements.
One of the injured made comment as to leave, the others agreed, and Wendy dug her nails into her thighs to ward off the cramp. It was an odd sound at first, and one she had to dig through her memory for, Prowl and Skids, while they couldn't inform her verbally, had already guessed, radio static. How anything electronic could still function was beyond her, but sure enough, that's what it was. One of them informed whoever was on the other end that this section was clear of "alien activity"; a less injured sounding reply was to return to base. The human female knew Prowl well enough so far as to not dare move until he told her. But something else moved. She thought it had to be one of the injured, or perhaps another scouting party coming to join them.
There it was again, it was a groan, followed by the all too familiar sound of a clicking door. The groan was a lot louder once the being it came from was outside of the corvette. Wendy glanced up from her hiding place and was able to grab sight of the young man's reflection in the Autobot's side mirror. She felt her voice loose itself in her throat, unable to make so much as a squeak, which was probably a good thing all things considered.
Raoul staggered about a metre, head down, his right hand cradling it, his left hand over his abdomen, the first discernable word out of his mouth was a profanity. He turned and noticed Tracks.
The injured humans just stood and watched, unsure at first what this man was about.
"Tracks? Man, you okay?"
He croaked.
What happened next took place in rapid succession.
The injured with the radio groaned down it that a human had climbed out of a damaged corvette in a convoy including a police cruiser and a van, the human had used an "alien" name. Raoul at this point hadn't noticed the injured three, and then saw Prowl and Skids, using their names, which the injured on the radio quickly reported.
There was an order barked back over the radio and then the three attacked.
Skids transformed, clutching Raoul and gently tossing him into the charred limbs of an old tree. Skids loosing any respect for organic life simply fired on the two rushing him, the female heading up the lead, a metal plank in her hands. Of course she was no match for a laser rifle. The man behind her was carrying what may have been a gun, but he never got a chance to fire it. The injured with the radio had disappeared.
"We need to go, Skids, get Raoul, transform".
Prowl commanded, Wendy took the moment to consider she might as well not hide beneath the dash as they were busted, sort of. Part of her wasn't really worried. Three injured humans against two Autobots? The two who were stupid, or delirious enough to attack had already gone to whatever afterlife awaited them, the one with the radio was probably the smartest.
She pulled herself back up into the front passenger's seat and latched the seat belt. That was odd, she thought, the clicking sound wasn't right, had it worked?
Wendy suddenly became acutely aware that the sound the seatbelt had made had been drowned out by the sound of the approaching helicopter.
"Shit! Prowl! LOOK!"
She squealed, pointing at the unsteady flying device.
Prowl revved his engine and spun around quickly, noting that Skids had grabbed Raoul already and was transforming down into vehicle mode around him.
"Take Wendy; Tracks and Raoul and hide. I'll lead them away".
Prowl ordered firmly as he flung the door open and a force from within pushed the human woman out. She didn't have time to be irritated and simply got up and clambered into the open door of the van, next to the dazed looking Latino.
Slamming the door shut she caught the final glimpse of Prowl as he disappeared over the filthy horizon, that helicopter in pursuit, opening fire as Prowl blasted back.
"Will he be okay?"
She asked, surprised at how she'd come to feel, well, something, for the Autobot.
"He'll be fine".
Skids replied rather harshly as he pulled a sharp U-turn, Track's flicking roughly behind on the connection.
"Wooh! Man! Check that out!"
Raoul gasped as his head cleared enough that he could now notice an opened bed truck with quite a few people with guns on the back, and all of those guns were now targeted at them, not to mention firing.
"Please tell me you're bullet proof!"
Wendy screeched as several large twangs indicated they had been hit.
The Autobot replied with a simple grunt of sarcastic annoyance.
As bullet proof as he was, the problem was quickly becoming obvious that Autobot or not, bullet proof or not, he was a van and he was towing a corvette and they were trying to escape over rather damaged terrain. The truck full of angry humans with guns was catching up with them.
An explosion took place a few metres ahead of them, causing what was left of that section of road to explode in chunks and add a rather nasty shroud of dust and soot to block at least the vision of the humans. Skids lost his traction as he hit the newly created pot hole and was unable to regain his balance, he uttered a word in Cybertronian that Raoul knew to be a swear, a pretty bad one at that, and then the two found themselves bouncing around in the rolling van. Raoul's injured form refused to take the constant attack and so he lost consciousness, at some point Wendy joined him, leaving Skids alone, upside down, to deal with the approaching horde of bipedal insects with roboticidal tendencies.
ooOOooo
Skids woke to find himself in an obviously structurally unsound building. He was chained rather practically to the concrete floor. Staring up he noted the size of the roof and the amount of broken windows. It could have once been a hanger, but he was guessing its more recent use had been as an abattoir, but with that said; chances are it hadn't been used for that purpose in quite a number of years.
When he changed his focus from the aged additions to the building, and the building itself, he noticed the humans standing around him, some were perched up on metal gratings that had once served as cat walks, he believed the human phrase was. They were all in various stages of radiation poisoning, all with injuries evidence of their proximity to any one of the many blasts that had taken place in this region.
Tracks was parked to his left, his wheels bolted down with clamps and heavy chains attached around him. He couldn't see Prowl anywhere, and had to wonder about his fate, likewise, he couldn't see any sign of Wendy or Raoul.
"Who are you people?"
He asked irritably.
"Shut up alien".
A male replied. Possibly in his mid teens.
There was no kind of pattern to the humans, their clothing, or what was left of it, was as different to each other as their forms and ages. Some were old enough to look as if they belonged in a facility for their species elderly, others looked like they belonged in playgrounds and school yards, others were overweight, while others were underweight, of all different ethnicities and even different faiths, as he noticed a human wearing a cross around her next standing next to a man wearing what was a turban and a red dot painted on his forehead.
Something caught his optic as one of the older, hairless males turned to face the door as it began to open, just behind his ear was a microchip.
And the Autobot had seen that chip before. Years ago. It was what had been removed from Sparkplug. Granted, Skids had not been on earth during that event, but he'd researched it greatly. That was part of the reason Prime had requested the anthropologist. To see if the event that had resulted in a lot of humans being controlled by technology many attributed to the Decepticons had damaged their reputation amongst the natives.
From his research, Skids had determined that the Decepticons would not have been able to have crafted these devices without the help of a human who had a detailed knowledge of the human brain, and more importantly, once this human had disappeared into obscurity the Decepticons lost interest in the technology, which was usually how it went. Megatron would invest time in a plan, the plan would fail, Megatron would shelve it. Of course, the good Doctor had died several years before, while he had ended up on Cybertron, injured and then repaired with cybernetic technology, his human immune system eventually responded to it violently, in much the same was as an allergic reaction. Nothing had been able to save him, and his remains had been found shortly after the Autobots had reclaimed Cybertron.
Skids watched then as a man of about 60 walked through the door, his eyes seemed blank of any real kind of consideration. He looked like the images of Sparkplug when he was controlled.
"Greetings Autobot".
The man stated.
He wore the remains of a military uniform. A five star general; a considerable ranking.
The man was fit for his age; he would most likely be mistaken for a man in his late 40s, if one was being conceited. Obviously a gentlemen who took care of his physical form as Skids could view quite clearly the muscular tone underneath the more ragged areas of his once most probably pristine jacket. If he allowed his hair to grow, the man would be in possession of a head of full, black hair; with the occasional grey adding to an already powerful aura of distinction. Even under in the current circumstances the man had found moment and ability to shave. Impressive. His most striking feature was his complete heterochromia, his left eye a striking blue, an enviable tone in its own right, while the right eye was a light pastel green. Of course, something gave Skids the feeling that this individual didn't particularly care about this noticeable genetic trait.
"My name is General Haddings, my first name, of course, is none of your business, you piss pot machine".
"Why have you captured me? Where are my friends? What did you do with the humans that were with us?"
The standard, clichéd questions, Skids realised, but they seemed as good a place as any to start.
"My, my, so many questions. Quite rude that you didn't return the favour of offering me your name, of course, I wouldn't' have cared, after all, you're just an over glorified wind up toy".
Skid narrowed his optics.
"Do I detect a hint of malice? Wouldn't surprise me, of course, given how despicably immoral you monsters are".
"Coming from a member of a species that just wiped out its own, yeah, we're really immoral".
Skids spat back, his toned oozing with sarcasm, a rare behaviour from him.
"Oh please! What makes you think we were aiming for ourselves?"
"Excuse me? You expect me to believe that you humans launched a full scale, nuclear assault against all your major centres, your traditional opponents, and friends, with the full intent and purpose of wiping us out?"
Skids found that hard to believe.
"Hah! It doesn't matter what you think, if you are indeed thinking, if you are indeed a "you". All that matters are your kind is now rusting away under piles of radioactive debris, and that warms my heart more then my late wife's pumpkin pie".
"She die in one of your anti-robot firestorms?"
The Autobot growled.
"No, quite the opposite in fact, though robots did have something to do with it. She died back in the 80s, coming home from the hospital after visiting her sick Aunt Mabel. Then you morons attacked the city, for whatever purpose giant alien robots have. She got caught in the cross fire and was killed. She was even with child, do you understand that monster?"
The general seemed pained to recall the incidence.
"Even our little dog, Fifi, the cutest little toy poodle with a wag that could light up a room! And her little studded collar and sweet little jackets my wife used to make for her! And now she's dead! So I lost my wife, unborn child and Fifi, all because of you misfits".
He paused to compose himself.
"But enough about me and my reasons, lets get down to business. Your robot compatriots are dead. The male human with you died of injuries, and I thought my men needed a bit of light hearted merriment, so that's where that despicable traitor whore is".
He chuckled as he clapped his hands together.
"We'll kill you later. We don't' quite have the resources for such an undertaking at present, but I thought I at least owed you the common courtesy of informing you of that much".
Pivoting on his heels he gave a sullen whimper that sounded almost like "Oh, Fifi, such a cute sweater collection you had" and then he left.
Skids found himself feeling both unimpressed and unsatisfied, the whole story, the whole general façade, these people here, none of it added up. Whether or not Prowl, Tracks and Raoul were dead, he didn't know, he certainly didn't trust the General, but things weren't looking good for him at the time. He shut down the majority of his unnecessary systems and decided to try and recharge, perhaps he could build up enough energy that he could stage some kind of escape.
What did he have to loose?
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